


Things We Have to Burn

by heartofthesunrise



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Fanmix, Gen, M/M, Playlist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise
Summary: A fanmix forRosie'sBandom Big Bang work,How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.





	Things We Have to Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250245) by [heartofthesunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise), [rosiedoesfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosiedoesfic/pseuds/rosiedoesfic). 



> Contains spoilers for _How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful._

>[download here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nxnh76tscuxl8vl/Things%20We%20Have%20To%20Burn.zip?dl=0)<

 

Tracklist: 

 

Jeff Rosenstock - We Begged 2 Explode

This is sort of a literal take for a first song on this mix. In its basest sense, the track is about feeling like the touring life will only end in flames, but that that’s somehow still preferable to a quiet life. It reminds me both of the way the band is stagnating at the beginning of the story, and the way that Patrick feels as though he’s brought down disaster on them by secretly wishing their homebodied, married lives weren’t looming over them.

 

Lorde - Life On Mars (Live David Bowie Cover)

There’s a part of the story early on, when they’re driving, when Joe puts on some Bowie and pointedly avoids “Space Oddity” which, fair. But from the first, I always thought “Life On Mars” would be at least as harrowing. Bowie’s original is full of bombast and, like, incredible contributions from one of my favorite keyboardists of all time, but Lorde’s - recorded at the Brit awards as a tribute to Bowie’s passing - has a certain grimness without being bleak, something that I think adds a little more flavor to the moment.

 

RVIVR - Ocean Song

This one’s for the long stretches of hopelessness as they drive up to Chicago. There’s a little passage in the first verse: “Folded into the fire / for just trying to be / and now I don’t think that there’s anything left inside of me.” It’s about the motions of keeping yourself going when there’s no obvious point, no real motivation outside of habit, outside of the short term goals we set for ourselves. “It’s a constant fight to keep every light burning” is, as the kids are saying these days, a Big Mood.

 

Jukebox the Ghost - Static to the Heart

Not to be melodramatic but this song’s just for how much I love Andy Hurley. There’s no precise way to map this track onto his character in the story, other than it being harder edged in its vulnerability, I guess. I keep coming back to the refrain, “This is not a test, this is the real thing” for him, though. 

 

The Movielife - Ship to Shore

A track for the night they spend at that rest station, nearly out of gas, having the same pointless arguments they’ve been having forever, albeit in slightly new ways. The scene between Joe and Patrick in the bathroom, where they each sort of fundamentally misunderstand what they mean to one another, really springs to mind. The “you’ll sleep again / if it means I have to build you a bed” line is so indicative of the begrudging way they can’t help but look after each other, even if they’re going to be passive aggressive about it.

 

Big Star - Kanga Roo

The song for Joe’s Brooklyn apartment, and the conversation he and Patrick have there. For me it’s more about the atmosphere of the instrumentals, this proto-shoegaze background noise, and these reminiscences of first meetings that are so kind of navel-gazey and introspective. There are repeated moments in the story when Patrick focuses on seeing in Joe’s eyes exactly what he’s thinking, that really vibe to me the same way as this track.

 

Midtown - Waiting for the News

Another literal one. There’s a huge swath of time where they stay in Chicago, entirely uncertain of what to do, or what the circumstances anywhere else are, how long they will need to provide for themselves, if it’s even worth planning when they know nothing about the invasion, about whether or not they’ll be taken, too. Also there’s a certain obvious parallel with “Even though we sleep together we’re alone.” Also, like, I hope Gabe made it out of the alien invasion okay.

 

Say Anything - Of Steel

My sorta lyrical interpretation of the way that Joe and Patrick start to accept their permanent places in one another’s lives. It’s a desperate situation, it’s dangerous and sometimes it’s shitty and restricting and difficult but it’s also the only choice they have, and that as much as they fight it, as uncomfortable as it is, it’s something they would choose for themselves if they weren’t so busy grieving.

 

The Wonder Years - Song for Ernest Hemingway

A more comfortable - and also not - song about giving and taking. There’s so much bitterness in Joe and Patrick’s relationship at this point, and so much of it is uncomfortably tied up with Pete and his ego. “I’ll be your dead bird, you’ll be my bloodhound / You’re just doing what you’re told, gonna make your master proud” isn’t the most charitable way for Joe to be thinking of how Patrick left him, all those years ago, but it’s also, like, not entirely inaccurate.

 

Ben Folds Five - Do It Anyway

This is my “choosing to leave Chicago” song. It seems like an impossible call to make, to uproot yourself without the promise of a better life, a real devil-you-know situation. The sort of resolve you have to have to pursue something so uncertain. Also the perilous piano parts lend it a certain danger. What a great song.

 

Elliott Smith - Independence Day

There’s a double-meaning to this pick. Obviously there’s a driving scene that takes place on Independence Day, but this song is gentler than that scene. It certainly doesn’t show Joe’s perspective. I think, actually, Pete is the closest we have to an optimist in this story, even if it’s most of the time borne out of sheer naivete. But he’s also the one who’s historically the most fatalistic, the most prone to bouts of self-destruction. And this track is tempered in its hopefulness; there’s never been a truly happy Elliott Smith track. Still, there comes a moment, on their way to Oregon, when “Everybody knows, everybody knows / You only live a day but it’s brilliant, anyway” isn’t the most out-there lyric to connect with.

 

Motion City Soundtrack - The Days Will Run Away

Around this point in the story is when the hopelessness starts to settle within me. Nothing’s going to be the same, and maybe it’s going to be beautiful, but it’s certainly going to be different. I can feel the superficial elements of these characters slipping away like sand in my cupped hands. The band? Chicago? The frivolous, millionaire lifestyle? The snatches we get of their pasts serve only to inform their interpretations of a precarious future. And regardless, there’s no going back, no changing anything. This is especially telling between Joe and Patrick, with the uneven foundation of their relationship as it stands.

 

Paramore - 26

I really struggled with a song to pick for the scene where they watch the sunrise over the Columbia River Gorge. It’s the first moment of truly explicit hope, and this song isn’t really… Hopeful. Or, it is, but it’s not happy. It’s about the constant and tedious and grueling struggle to continue existing. And yet, there’s that chorus, describing exactly what they’re doing in the moment: “Hold onto hope if you’ve got it / Don’t let it go for nobody / And they say that dreaming is free / But I wouldn’t care what it cost me.”

 

Eisley - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (NMH cover)

I wanted something scary and vaguely pastoral for their introduction to Oregon, and also something that could symbolize how much Joe and Patrick have been dwelling on their history and - sometimes unintentionally - designing a future around it. There’s this absolutely haunting passage of screechy, almost _sul ponticello_ strings that the original version of this song lacks, as well as these lovely, aching vocal harmonies. There’s something very otherworldly about it, and also very essential: it’s a song about coming home, and it’s a song about love.

 

Catfish & the Bottlemen - Cocoon

There’s a point after they get to Oregon when Joe and Patrick start effectively aping the motions of a romantic relationship, sort of swaddled in the memories they have of each other. And Pete’s still sort of giving them shit about it, because he can’t not, but he’s trying. And it still feels hard. Joe has a moment where he stops wearing his wedding ring, not because he doesn’t feel like he’s married anymore, but because he feels unworthy of it. And yet there’s an immediacy to his relationship with Patrick that he’s just not able to ignore.

 

Punch Brothers - Little Lights

For their settled life in Oregon. For the moment, even, when Joe and Patrick kiss outside the Halloween party. This is a song about simple moments and simple connections and the profoundness you can find in them. “Every moment a polished silver / link in a chain rattling through / our beloved tunes in our beloved rooms.”

 

The Mountain Goats - Genesis 30:3

The biblical context here is probably best left abandoned, but the sentiments ring true: “For hours we lay there, the last ones of our kind / harder days coming, maybe, I don’t mind / Sounds kind of dumb to say it but it’s true / I would do anything for you.” Maybe it’s just me but I think simple love is the most beautiful love.

 

The Promise Ring - Forget Me

One song for the peaceful, happy times in their new home. It’s so idyllic, and they’ve all taken to their new life so readily. There is still so much devastation in the wake of the invasion, but in their hollow in rural Oregon they get to live this sort of idealized, rustic life where “forget-me-nots and marigolds and other things that don’t get old, don’t get old.”

 

Big Tree - Home (Here)

This song is a special pull and is meant for the moment when the ships arrive, returning the citizens of earth. The rending of this perfectly imperfect life the guys have made for themselves. There are suddenly obligations again, and considerations to take outside of the four of them and the community they live in. The bridge, especially, is all about the uncertainty of knowing where you want to be and where you should be, and recognizing that those aren’t the same place.

 

Brand New - Batter Up

Since Rosie left the ending up to interpretation I want to leave a song that embraces that ambiguity. “Even though the roar died in your throat / the lines get blurred / lose whoever you once were / died and returned to the earth / found ourselves back / in love.”


End file.
